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Other holidays pale in comparison: Kids scheme to get the gifts they want. An eight-foot tall Santa who has heard enough of their whiny pleas for presents tosses kids off his lap and down a chute.
It's Christmas in the region, at least according to Hammond native and humorist Jean Shepherd, whose writings inspired the classic 1983 movie "A Christmas Story." The movie, and the story it's based on, features a vengeful Santa and a nine year-old Hoosier who yearns for a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas.
Shepherd, who died at 78 in October, grew up in the Hessville neighborhood of Hammond in the 1920s and 1930s. "A Christmas Story" is his most visible work, but only one in a prolific 40-year career that encompassed radio, TV, nightclub performances, books, and writing humorous pieces for a wide range of national publications.
"He's the best-known author to come out of the region," said Charles Tinkham, a longtime English professor and poet at Purdue University Calumet in Hammond. "I remember picking up one of his books many years ago. To my astonishment, here were stories about the Calumet area that were funny, but with a darker side."
Shepherd never again lived in Hammond after he left as a young man, but Hammond is there in the movie, his books and thousands of performances he delivered on the radio and on stage.
His vision of Northwest Indiana is full of mischievous kids, schools that strike fear -- and hope -- into a young boy's heart, and adults who take on mythical, yet comic, proportions.
His father didn't just try to fix the furnace. He was "One of the most feared Furnace Fighters in Northern Indiana."
Storyteller
Ironically, few people in the region have heard his radio shows, which were not broadcast here and are not widely available. Even his most popular books can be tough to find at local bookstores, with one or two on the shelves at most.
Shepherd spent more than 20 years from the 1950s to the 1970s as a late-night radio show host for New York's WOR-AM, a place where he honed many of his childhood fables.
One longtime fan said Shepherd would often stray from a topic for long stretches of time -- even an hour. Then he would magically return to them before going on to the next tale.
"When he would get around to telling a story, he would turn off all his ‘attitude,'" said Jim Sadur, who maintains a Web site on Shepherd from his home in New Jersey. "I do think he had a view that many have -- kind of a love-hate remembrance of their youth."
Sadur said he listened to Shepherd while growing up on the East Coast. "My father's rule was, if I was awake, I could still listen," he said.
Tales from the region
Shepherd's art is about making great stories out of the ordinary details of everyday life --- the White Sox game his father talks about or the Blatz beer his dad drinks. Or even through anecdotes about his Uncle Carl's false teeth.
In "A Christmas Story," nine-year old Ralphie grows up in a community called Hohman, named after a street in Hammond. Shepherd said his stories about the region were based on "a composite of the area," not just one community.
Though at times Shepherd was clearly inspired by his school days at Warren G. Harding Elementary and Hammond High School in Hammond. Shepherd explained in one story that only students with names that begin between A and M get an education because all others have to sit in the back of the class and are not likely to be called on.
"That class was an alphabetical ghetto," he said.
One celebrated story concerns Shepherd's absolute fear of being called on in algebra class at Hammond High, a subject so difficult for him that he said "the class was a minute-and-a-half old, and I was six weeks behind. I had a terrible fear of them finding out at home that I was a dumb slob."
Later, he claimed he hadn't been called on in 13 years.
He proceeded to explain the moment-by-moment paralysis, and ultimate triumph, of that experience in a story that builds as if he were describing a world-changing event.
As a teen, Shepherd worked at Inland Steel, an experience that contributed to his tale about the tribulations of walking around in "40-inch soaking pits," which he compares to Dante's Inferno.
He also describes his father's colorful way with language.
"Profanity was his medium. He would hate to hear amateurs swear," said Shepherd, as he launched into an aside about his parents.
Flick
One frequent subject of his stories is his friend Flick --- the bar "Flick's" still stands on Kennedy Avenue in Hammond. Though Flick (actually Jack Flickinger) no longer owns the bar, it still resembles the blue-collar spot described in Shepherd's works, catering mostly to men who just finished work.
In the first chapter of "In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash," the book that inspired "A Christmas Story," Shepherd's first trip back to his old neighborhood includes a stop at Flick's, where he and Flick once worked together.
One time, Shepherd said he and Flick debated whether a man could walk on water.
"There's nothing to that," Flick said. "Every time we go down to Whiting, my old man walks a block and a half on water. You can't even get your foot through that water."
Biting the hand that feeds?
Shepherd's life was characterized by a complicated, thorny relationship with where he grew up during the Depression, amid neighbors in one and two-frame story houses.
There's no way around it: Some people here who tried to honor, or even just applaud, Shepherd found their community or themselves skewed by his words.
His letter of acceptance in 1981 to the Hammond Public Library for an award from the city devoted much of its length to railing against the city and "a select committee of watchful Hammond residents" who "operated successfully to keep "any mention of my name out of the records of this town, for their sinister purposes."
Once in the mid-1980s, he began a speech at the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville by saying many people over the years have asked him if "he missed Hammond."
Shepherd rolled his eyes and rubbed his head. Then he said, "That's kind of like asking, ‘Do you miss the cold sores you had last week?' "
Later, he tore into a few people whose questions he didn't like.
"I think a lot of people were turned off his writing because he poked fun at the area," said Brian Pearson of Highland, 32, a fan whose father used to live near the Shepherd family on Cleveland Street. "I can relate to a lot of what he said and wrote, but I'm sure he hit some sore spots with people. He was also sarcastic to people here a couple of times. Maybe he felt he should have been honored here more than he was."
Pearson, though, said he's as big a Shepherd fan as ever and that the author should be recognized more by local residents.
"I try to approach his work with a sense of humor," he said. "It's done in good spirits and it's funny."
Distinctive voice
"There's no reason to be offended or avoid his work," said Steve McShane, archivist with the Calumet Regional Archives at Indiana University Northwest, who was Shepherd's host in 1995 when the school awarded him an honorary doctorate.
"In his own way, he has brought to light a fascinating place," McShane said.
Tinkham said that after "A Christmas Story" was released, Shepherd "moved away from his original interest in the Calumet area."
But references to Hessville, Hammond High, Inland Steel are there in books like "In God We Trust," "Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories and Other Disasters," and "A Fistful of Fig Newtons."
"If you were born in any area of the Calumet, you must read these books," Tinkham said. "No, you can't always depend on what he said, because artists tend to lie a lot. But there's great humor in how he overstates things. He was a genuine storyteller."
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